zapster

A top 10 Eco admit is definitely difficult to reject, so I empathize with your dilemna - but I think an important consideration is whether the dept. you are entering has a strong and established interest and faculty in Behavioral Economics. Unless you are able to strongly entrench yourself into this area within the eco program, the program may backfire at least as far as your interests in CogPsych are concerned. On the other hand, if there is a strong BehEco focus, you may actually even enjoy approaching the same issues from this perspective and possibly even change your mind about pursuing a Psych phd. Best of Luck.

change "noticed some of your interes includes ____" to "am extremely interested by your research areas in _____" <or similar sentiment>. get rid of "Unfortunately............internet search". change "I was wondering...." to "I will appreciate if you could point me to resources where I may be able to find further information on........."

Yes you certainly can, especially areas such as cognitive. There are plenty of very strong cognitive programs where strong mathematical and statistical skills are much more in demand than a Psych background. You need to demonstrate a very clear vision of why you are interested in, say cognitivie psychology, demonstrate familiarity with seminal research in the field, and why this would be abetter 'fit' for you rather than an eco program. You may also need to demonstrate reasonable (if not strong) programming skills, so perhaps spending some time there may be helpful. Just to clarify - I understand you will begin your Eco phd this fall? Am not really sure how that would impact your chances for a subsequent phd application....is there an alternative to pursue a masters program instead? Contrary to your comment above, in my experience research experience is not necessarily a pre-requisite in many excellent cognitive programs, a big positive yes, but can definitely be compensated for by other unique skill sets.

If its a prior experience essay it should be much much more than a CV or resume. You might be expected to link in your past experiences - job, research, academic - with both your motivation and capability for pursuing the specifc research areas you outline in your SOP.

.....thats why a phD program takes 3 to 5+ years.... ok, for a not-so-flippant answer....what triggered your interests? whats your background? why do u want a phd? when you say you want to work in credit risk modeling - is this in the industry or within academia? a lot of these factors will determine whats the "right topic" for you. To find the right topic and a "research gap" you will need to read. a lot. really really lots. and this is an ongoing process that will go on for as long as you remain in academia. I presume at this stage you want to identify something to put into your SOP? If that is the case, start with your interests, identify the programs and professors you would like to work with and read some of their work. That should give you a good starting point.

Not really; many people are far more comfortable with one-on-one conversations than putting up a comment for the whole world to see.....

Hi WildViolet, I think it is a big stretch to extrapolate online behavior with general personality traits...there are just too many confounding variables. It is perfectly normal for people to be reluctant to express themselves on social media. Many people in fact find it really weird when some people keep flooding their FB with their entire life stories ( I for one really do not want to know or see pictures of what people ate for dinner everyday!). It also seems perfectly perfectly normal for people to read FB posts without commenting on them - I mean most people I know have an average of lets say a few <small single number> hundred FB contacts, even if 50 of these put up something daily, would you expect them to comment on 50 items daily? [For example, hope you are enjoying your Muscato ..although I must say I did comment on that thread too!!!] Of people in general - perhaps it is too much to expect everyone everyone to hold the same behavioral traits in esteem that you do?

Mini wine-bottles; vacuum pump storage may help Also, don't know enough, but aren't a lot of the economics of wine production are driven by an active trading and futures market? Some of these capture future expected crop trends etc., and I suspect cultural trends are probably "manipulated" by underlying production trends rather than the other way around ?

tin pin

It goes further than just overall GPA - adcoms will often look at grades in specific courses, level of difficulty of courses and evidence of your capabilities in specific quant / mathematical finance skill sets. You should highlight your quantitative masters degree, specific skill sets learnt, any research experience during your masters (even if not directly related to your phd researchaspirations), etc. A "UK high 2.1" would not rule you out of top tier universities, but needs to be strongly supplemented by everything else. For example, a poor GRE quant score + a poor grade in say a highly quantitative masters course may put adcoms off, and vice versa. Your summer internships may not count for much in terms of the work content (unless it was closely related to academic research - for example research wrt finance policy say with the World Bank for example?; or the nature of the work was highly quantitative?) but even if not, you could position your experiences during the internships as shaping your research interests. Difficult to predict all the factors that any particular adcom considers, but like any other selection process, there are multiple variables that impact your application and top tier admissions are extremely competitive, so my suggestion would be to broadbase the number of universities you are applying to. Strong LORs would count a lot. Focus also on research fit, specific research done by depts. and POIs, write to POIs in advance to get an idea of your fit, and be familiar with their work. Scavenge these forums for a lot of other fantastic advice (and then some) ! Best of Luck!

Your GRE score would be a hygiene factor, a great score may still not mean anything if the rest of your application isn't strong, but a really poor score may cut you out. For a PhD in Finance your quant score would be important. In general, your LORs, SOP, relevant research experience, GPA and program fit (not necessarily in that order) would probably weigh more. My personal experience is that the relevance of the GRE may increase slightly for international students. GRE score required would depend on the schools you are applying to, but for top tier schools a PhD Finance program would probably require top percentile quant scores.

For the top Universities, your GRE Quant score should be 170 or 99%...or as close to that as you possibly can get. Not that people with lower GRE scores dont get in, but just that there are plenty of applicants out there with even these scores that do not. Having said that, GRE is probably nothing more than a low level hygiene factor when it comes to top tier Universities, and by no means "makes sure" that you do get admitted. Having a top profile from your country is a big positive, a fantastic GRE score will also help, but remember that you will be competing against very similar candidates of whom only say 5% or so will get admitted to a particular top tier school. Ensuring strong LORs, SOP and research fit with the programs will weigh far more on your app than a GRE score or even your GPA will. Highlight your top position / ranks etc. - for international students where GPA etc. can be misleading, showcasing that you have been amongst the top percentile in your class can be a big plus. Is there any undergrad or masters research work, thesis, project etc. that you can highlight. Start writing to POIs early with a brief of your profile and research interests (there are many threads on this forum that discuss this) - this will give you a good idea of where you might stand. In your SOP, show that you are conversant with classical as well as contemporary research in your area of interest. Best of Luck!

I would tend to put down examples of instances that I have seen and observed first hand, deliberated over, translated into concepts and hence pursued such ideas - rather than examples that are first person - in my opinion examples including the self can easily be interpreted the wrong way, given that there is onyl a limited amount of space to describe these.

There may be varying views on this, but If it is a SOP I would try to minimize using personal experiences as motivation for your research interests. It may be true, but unless very well articulated and contextualized, can easily come across as being trivial or artificial. On the other hand, if it is a Personal Statement required in addition to the SOP (e.g. I think UC Berkeley requires something like that) and your experiences tie in with the objectives of the personal statement, then yes maybe you could include it. As far as "personal journey" goes - I would interpret this as your journey as it relates to academic and professional interests, something that elaborates on your thought process wrt the research interest, something that is unique about your research interests other than saying, for example "I am interested in Victoria Literature because it is, ..err.. interesting". You get my drift. I do not think you should interpret this as an invitation to talk about your personal experiences, other than your experiences studying or researching that topic. Does this make sense ?

Relax. No it wasn't rude. Most people expect follow ups - unless someone has very specifically requested you not to follow up, I've never seen the harm in doing so.

Yes. The question should be How WELL do you know the professor. Scratch that. It should be How well does the professor know you?

If you are sure this is being addressed in one LOR, you might want to consider not putting it in the SOP at all. If you do want to put it in the SOP, definitely do it towards the end, after you have highlighted your strengths, key research interests, why you are in interested in the articular program, POIs etc. Some applications even have the option to add "Any other points" in a separate section of the application. If this is possible, I would advise not putting it in the SOP at all, but in this separate section.

Agree...I prefer a small laptop to any tablet for any kind of "real work"......have not tried the recent laptop-tablets though, has anyone used those?

I had the same concern, but my supervisor(s) at work were amazingly helpful, understood the requirement and did not seem to mind (or atleast did not show it!). I think the key was to set expectations upfront - I must have repeated a dozen times that it was a cumbersome process and I want to apply to XXX universities - and their response was to "bring it on". But of course, this depends from person to person....... My suggestion - be upfront...tell her that she might be required to login to 10 different websites and fill in stuff. Ask her if that is ok. Once she knows what to expect and then commits, it should not be an issue. Give her adequate lead time before the deadlines.

seriously - you became a member to post this ?

Drop all references to childhood aspirations etc. This is probably #1 on the list of common SOP aspects adcoms are tired of hearing. I would suggest starting straight away with your research interests. Unless you have a really unique high-impact 'story', get into the details of your interests straight away, and I suggest you elaborate on these a bit more than what you have. You could follow up on these by then talking about what you have already done, your experiences, and how they link back to your interests. Be more specific about the nature of the "pioneering work at UNT", and how this links in to your interest. Best of Luck !

If your grades seem to look worse than they are in light of comparison to the American system, perhaps a rank letter, or something showing you were in the Top X%, from your University might help....

Cant agree more with some of the views expressed above - most of the so called grad school compaints are not unique to grad school at all. Am yet to start grad school (awaiting Fall 2013 very very eagerly), but I would have thought setting such low expectations (as the author suggests - although my personal experience has been hearing far more balanced views on the grad school experience), would infact make the real experience far more enjoyable ?

As bellefast said, there needs to be some difference, but at the same time there should definitely be some overlap to show that your underlying interests are consistent. I expect you would be possibly looking at 2 different departments covering similar topics but perhaps from different perspectives? If there are common faculty, it is important that they get the feeling that you are genuinely interested in the "core" theme, and are open to approaching it from these different perspectives.

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